Ever wished for tranquility amidst life's turmoil? We promise an insightful journey that explores achieving enduring peace through obedience to God's commandments in this captivating episode of the Real Friends podcast. Drawing parallels from the dynamics of a child-parent relationship and the popular movie, Scrooge, we demonstrate how disobedience can rob us of peace.
As we dissect the importance of confessing and turning away from sin, it becomes evident that the pathway to immediate peace is paved with obedience to God's Word. Whether you’re a seasoned believer or just discovering faith, this episode is your compass to navigate towards true peace.
Ever wished for tranquility amidst life's turmoil? We promise an insightful journey that explores achieving enduring peace through obedience to God's commandments in this captivating episode of the Real Friends podcast. Drawing parallels from the dynamics of a child-parent relationship and the popular movie, Scrooge, we demonstrate how disobedience can rob us of peace.
As we dissect the importance of confessing and turning away from sin, it becomes evident that the pathway to immediate peace is paved with obedience to God's Word. Whether you’re a seasoned believer or just discovering faith, this episode is your compass to navigate towards true peace.
Shalom. Yo, well said shalom. Hey everybody, Welcome back to the Real Friends podcast. This is the Advent series. We are working our way through the second theme of Advent, which is peace, and we talked about the facets of peace, which are peace with God, internal peace, peace with self, and that enables us, in turn, progressively, to have peace with others. We talked about how to appropriate that peace. It's one thing to know that we can have it and it's another thing to walk in it. Last week we talked about prayer, and specifically prayer of thanksgiving. This time we're going to talk to you. This time we're going to talk about something else, pastor. Go ahead and lead in it. It's something that has a dark tone sometimes, but doesn't need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So again, the way, first and foremost, that we appropriate the peace of God in our lives is to pray. Paul made that clear in Philippians 4, be anxious for nothing, but by all things, in prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God, and then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will God our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. But when we pray there's something else that has to accompany that prayer, and if we do not have this, we will not have peace in that is Melancholy cookies.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like it oh no, that's not what we were going for. What is it, Tyler?
Speaker 2:Obedience, obedience. Yeah, we have got to obey. The way I think about this is you know, if you have kids, you know this to be the case. Like you, love your kids and you know we all love a peaceful home. But when a child disobeys, there is a lack of peace, there's a little bit of tension in the home.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? Amen Abby never disobeys.
Speaker 1:No, abby doesn't disobey precisely, but she's our little lawyer. She negotiates and manipulates until she thinks she is getting her way. I don't believe it for a minute.
Speaker 2:So you know, what happens in the life of a Christian is that, yes, the peace of God is available to us through Jesus, but when we disobey God's word, we could say that the peace of God becomes veiled. So, Tyler, read for us Isaiah 48, 18. O that you had paid attention to my commandments, then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. O that you would have obeyed or paid attention to my commandments then, your peace would be like a river.
Speaker 2:So I think one of the ways again that we forfeit the peace of God is when we disobey. So I remember when we lived in Tucson, arizona, connor, my youngest son, was probably four or five years old and we took him to the mall to see Santa, and when we went there they had this device that looked like kind of an arcade thing and you pushed a button to see if you were on the naughty or nice list. And so Connor is getting ready to push this button. You know lights up with colors and all this. He pushes it and he was absolutely sweating bullets.
Speaker 1:The most nervous a toddler has ever been, that's right and he knew.
Speaker 2:You know, thinking back over his year I'm sure he knew he probably there was a good chance he was going to wind up on the naughty list. And you know, suffice to say that he had no peace in that moment because he had been disobedient. And Connor, sorry if you're listening, but you being disobedient, that was a vast understatement.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, four and five year olds can be a little bit willful. Perhaps we should not be too hard on him in retrospect.
Speaker 2:Very true. But you know, when we disobey God, we forfeit the peace that we have. And you know, I've seen this. You know, through 20 plus years of ministry I've had many Christians come to me and, pastor man, I just don't have peace. I have so much anxiety and you start talking to them and it's like, well, no wonder you're living contrary to the word of God. And you know, the beautiful thing is this about God's law and his word, his commandments. They're not burdensome. God created us. You know. They're to our benefit, they are. And he lays out for us the best way to live, the way to live. You know it's he gives us the way to live that is going to bring us the most joy and peace and wholeness that we could ever experience.
Speaker 1:Now you can chase achievement and education and finances and money and all these different things and live life with yourself at the helm and perhaps find some joys and some blessings along the way. But they're going to be fleeting and your whole way getting there is just about guaranteed to be absolutely riddled with anxiety.
Speaker 2:So we've tried to several episodes tie in like a Christmas movie. Can you think of a good tie in for this?
Speaker 1:One that comes to mind is Scrooge. We had talked about it a couple of three days ago but not happened to have included it. And while it is not pervasively a Christian film, you do have the character of Scrooge, who is definitely not living what we would call a godly life. He has his employee under his thumb, he lords these debts over all these other people and tries to make them as miserable as he possibly can, and yet they oftentimes have joy anyway. And then how does he feel? Instead himself? He's miserable, completely miserable. The only joy that he ever finds is a false joy, this joy of basically hurting others. Right, he has no sense of peace? No, but he finally and the analogy here isn't perfect, but he does finally come around. And where we would do this best? By being obedient, you know, directly to God's word, he ends up being obedient to his instincts, after being either hallucinating or given the visitations of these ghosts. So what is it he sees? By the third one that is so paramount? He sees his death, his grave, his headstone, exactly.
Speaker 1:So, well, we don't need to necessarily be frightened into. You know feeling the way that you know we should be. You know appropriating, you know God's peace. That is where Scrooge ends up. He ends up turning around and living something much closer to a godly life where he is writing off people's debts for giving debts.
Speaker 2:When you think about it, you know when we disobey God, you know what we're really saying. We're saying God, I know better than you how to run my life. When you think back to the Garden of Eden, you know Adam and Eve. God gave them a clear command don't eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But they saw the fruit and they thought man, this looks really good.
Speaker 1:Yes. And then they heard a voice that said you know, is that really what God meant by his?
Speaker 2:command. Are you sure you need to?
Speaker 1:follow it. Are you sure that he is not giving you this command for his benefit? He made it for you. Yeah, he. You know that he doesn't want you to know the difference between good and evil. He does not want you to be too much like him. Wouldn't you like to be in control of your life?
Speaker 2:So they, they believe the lie that they knew better than God, and they ate of the fruit. And history has never been the same. And so I think back to times in my life when I thought you know, I know what God's word says, but I think this decision would be OK, even though it's contrary to the word of God, like it's, like, subconsciously, I'm thinking I know better than God.
Speaker 1:How does that usually work out?
Speaker 2:I would say that that never works out to my benefit. And so you know, one sure way to forfeit the peace of God is to disobey his word. And, to be fair, it's not easy to follow God's words. God's word, it is often countercultural. You know, we say often that the kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom.
Speaker 1:Or we can say that God's way is the right side up way and that we are living in an upside down world.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, and so it is countercultural is some of God's commands are listen, they are worth following, they are for our benefit. So if you're listening today and you know you lack God's peace, you call yourself a Christian. I would just ask you to evaluate your life. Are you living by the word of God? Are you committing sins of commission or omission? You know, if you are, I would, I would encourage you to to change your behavior. And you know, here's the beautiful thing, nicky and I talked about this in our in our episode. But you know, first John 1, 9, it says confess your sins to God and when you do that, he's faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so you know, if you're, if you're walking into disobedience right now, just say confess those things to God and turn from them, and there is just this immediate peace that you can experience. I'm sure you guys have all experienced that it's. It's a wonderful feeling.
Speaker 1:And it's a great way to you know, getting back on track like that will lift so much anxiety and give you so much peace here at a time of year when it can be really, really hard to find extra hard. Absolutely, I think we'll set everyone so we'll get back together again for the next episode and talk a little bit more peace, or yeah?